Information about firmware patches can now be found at the Patches Page.

A prerequisite is something to apply the patches (.tfp files) to the firmware (.tfd file): either FireBird's HDFW v2 TAP for the Toppy (Guide and Thread) or FWPatcher (for the PC). All the main patches (and aXeL and some patching TAPs) are available in one handy PatchPackV2. So all you need now is the latest HDFW v2 (or FWPatcher) and the Patch Pack.

Many people put their firmware and patches applied in their sig. Is it worth adding in your post the patch letter used to denote the applied patches in people sig? It may make it easier for other to see what patches others are using together.

Any chance you can add links to the appropriate threads for each patch when you have a moment so that people can follow up the discussions on each patch?

That was on my list, but it was a big job and I ran out of time last night.

I'm not sure about the letters thing -- mainly because it would mean having to decide on some letters for some of the newer ones!

The good news is that FireBird has a crack team beta testing HDFW v2, and this can do the patching on your Toppy, too! So there's some hope that you will be able to identify what your current (stored) firmware is patched with.

I'm not sure about the letters thing -- mainly because it would mean having to decide on some letters for some of the newer ones!

Not a real problem though? Can not the Patch creators chose a suitable (unused) letter? I thought it would help new users understand what patches are currently being used by different people (and which ones may or may not work with their firmware).

No big issue, just thought it would help. Excellent job on putting the list together.

More helpful maybe, a tool that runs on the PC that can analyse any copy of the firmware and detects which version it is and which patches have been applied to it. If it could also detect any unrecognised patches (checksum with suitable adjustments per known patch?), even better.

That's kind of what the firmware patcher does. Load a patched firmware into it and it'll detect which of the patches you've got on your PC have been applied. What it won't do is tell you which mystery patches have been applied.

Perhaps there's some means of inserting an additional chunk of data, or perhaps a redundant block of memory that'd be written to flash and could be read by a TAP.